United Nations official visiting Alabama to investigate 'great poverty and inequality'

A United Nations official arrives in Alabama this week to investigate poverty, inequality and "barriers to political participation" in the state.

Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, will visit Alabama on Thursday and Friday as part of a 15-day tour of the U.S. that also includes stops in California, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

"Some might ask why a UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States. But despite great wealth in the US, there also exists great poverty and inequality," Alston said in a statement.

Alston will spend Thursday in Lowndes County, where he will be looking at issues like health care, access to clean and safe drinking water, and sanitation.

The Guardian reported in September on a study exposing the fact that a small number of people have tested positive for hookworm - a parasitic disease found in impoverished areas around the world - in Lowndes County.

During his Alabama visit, he will also look at voting rights, political participation and "government efforts to eradicate poverty in the country, and how they relate to US obligations under international human rights law."

On Friday, Alston will go to Montgomery, for a meeting with local civil service and civil rights advocacy groups.

"I would like to focus on how poverty affects the civil and political rights of people living within the US, given the United States' consistent emphasis on the importance it attaches to these rights in its foreign policy, and given that it has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Alston said.

He plans to meet with "government officials, people living in poverty, civil society organizations and academic experts to address a wide range of key areas including the criminal justice system, welfare and healthcare, barriers to political participation, homelessness, and basic social rights such as the right to social protection, housing, water and sanitation."

Alston plans to hold a press conference in Washington on Friday, Dec. 15, during which he will discuss his initial observations about such issues and his preliminary recommendations for how to address them. Alston expects to release a final report on the trip in spring 2018 that will be presented before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June.